


nightcap (just fall in the bed)

by SolaSola



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 03: The Unsleeping City, F/M, First Aid, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Literal Sleeping Together, Ramen, TUC Prompt Meme, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:00:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolaSola/pseuds/SolaSola
Summary: They end up just sliding down and sitting side by side on the floor with their backs against the cabinets and their bowls in their hands, slurping ramen like no one’s there to remind them about manners.“I’m sorry I ran out of heals,” Ricky says quietly, ducking his head so he’s not making eye contact.Esther doesn’t even think about it before she says, “Not your fault.”[Esther and Ricky patching each other up and eating ramen at midnight after a rough battle]
Relationships: Ricky Matsui/Esther Sinclair
Comments: 30
Kudos: 90
Collections: Dimension 20's The Unsleeping City Prompt Meme





	nightcap (just fall in the bed)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [londer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/londer/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [londer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/londer/pseuds/londer) in the [TUC_Prompt_Meme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TUC_Prompt_Meme) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Ricky and Esther patching each other up after a big battle
> 
> Warning: The characters talk a lot about burns and bruises. Nothing is graphic, but this is very much a fic about patching each other up.

Ricky doesn't know a lot of things. And his girlfriend is like the smartest person in the world, he's pretty sure, so most of the time it's not his job to know the things.

But one thing Ricky's learned in the last couple of months of knowing Esther (and dating Esther, and moving in with Esther, and starting an outreach program with Esther, and occasionally getting calls from the Order of the Concrete Fist about monsters sneaking in from the Unsleeping City into the sewers that they have to fight, also with Esther) is that wizards can do a whole bunch of cool stuff with magic, but they can't heal.

The upshot of this is that when both of them finish trudging through the slushy February streets and get up the stairs to the apartment, it’s past midnight and they’re both hurting bad. 

It’d been a long and tiring battle, them and the rest of the Dream Team against some super gross sludgy magma monsters down in the sewers under Midtown after Rowan had tipped them off to a bunch of exploding manholes off-off-off Broadway. Ricky had been right next to one of the magma monsters when it exploded and set him on fire, and Esther had gotten slammed in the side by a super heavy manhole cover while he was dealing with that. So now Ricky’s hair is kind of singed and smells like burned gel (gross), and Esther’s clean out of spell slots and walking gingerly like she’s going to bruise real bad. 

Kingston had been deadly low on spells by the time they’d cleaned up the sewers, so he’d spread around what heals he could before telling everyone they’d need to get a full night’s rest to take them the rest of the way. Even Ricky had used up all his Lay on Hands and was feeling kind of empty and jittery because of it. (Also, fighting fire monsters always makes him vaguely grumpy. Especially exploding sewer fire monsters, when the fire department had been _telling_ the utility companies about the electrical fire risks for years—)

When they get in, Ricky sits down heavily on the bench by the door to stomp the slush off his shoes before he takes them off, and Esther waves a hand tiredly to Prestidigitate the mess out of her hair before going straight to take first shower. It’s a kind of unspoken agreement, a silence neither of them feels the need to fill, but still one with too much battle fatigue to really be called comfortable. 

Ricky doesn’t know a lot of things, but he thinks he’s pretty okay at learning them, and one of the things he’s most glad to know by heart now is this kind of quiet dance, the way both of them come home to the same space and orbit around each other even when they’re almost too tired to talk. When Esther comes out of the bathroom with her hair all wrapped up in a scarf and her pajamas on, he kind of points with his chin to the water he started boiling on the stove for instant ramen and then goes to take his own turn. At the very least, scrubbing soot out of his hair had been a pretty normal part of his routine even before the Gramercy Occult society. 

Esther turns around from the stove to give him an obvious once-over when he comes out of the bathroom with his fuzziest pajama pants and no shirt on, and that’s—nice, still, so he flexes a little to make her roll her eyes but laugh quietly anyway.

It’s the little things.

* * *

“So that was a bad one, huh,” Ricky says, walking behind Esther to open the freezer. She doesn’t know what he’s doing until she feels something ice cold bumping at the back of her neck and jumps about a foot in the air, dropping the chopsticks she’s holding half into the pot of ramen.

“Oh my— Ricky!” Esther yelps and swats at him but takes the ice pack ( _unbelievably perfect ridiculous tired-grinning boyfriend, sneaking up on her_ ) and tucks it under her shirt along her ribs, holding it there with one arm. She’s wearing an absolutely gigantic FDNY sweatshirt, but she can already tell her whole side’s going to be purple in the morning. That manhole was _heavy_ , and she hadn’t even been fast enough to throw up a shield, and the second fact hurts a little more than the first. 

Luckily she doesn’t have to be the one to fish out the chopsticks she dropped, because Ricky hip checks her gently out of the way and turns off the stove before grabbing another pair to get them out. He gives the noodles a last stir and starts to get them out into mismatched bowls. 

Shaking her head, Esther agrees, “Yeah, it was a bad one. Fucking sewer explosions, I thought that was just utility company bullshit.”

It’s too late and they’re both too tired to actually sit at a table, so they end up just sliding down and sitting side by side on the floor with their backs against the cabinets and their bowls in their hands, slurping ramen like no one’s there to remind them about manners. 

“I’m sorry I ran out of heals,” Ricky says quietly, ducking his head so he’s not making eye contact.

Esther doesn’t even think about it before she says, “Not your fault.” Her point is kind of undermined by the fact that she has to reach under her arm to adjust where she’s holding the ice pack along her side, and Ricky frowns. Because that’s not what she wants to be happening, Esther drops her head onto his shoulder and looks up at his face from below as best she can. She bounces her head a little, as if the weight of her curled up into his side can remind him that she's here, she's fine, they're okay. “Not your fault,” she repeats, “but also between the two of us you’re the one who knows first aid so you can make it up to me by helping bandage up these burns.” 

The concerned wrinkle between Ricky's eyes doesn't disappear (Esther thinks she loves him all the more for how hard it is for her to reassure him) but he smiles a little and tries to lean down to kiss her nose. It _tickles_ and also smells like spicy instant ramen broth, so she picks her head up and tips his head towards hers to kiss him properly. It’s fine if both of them have ramen breath, right?

“There’s antibiotic ointment and gauze in the medicine cabinet,” Ricky says earnestly, and this is very much not the kind of conversation she wants to have in between kisses, so Esther just has to shake her head a little ( _absurdly sweet caring dork boyfriend_ ) and kiss him again to fix that problem by shutting him back up. Not that Ricky seems to mind.

He’s still fucking shirtless, because her boyfriend is Ricky Matsui and of course he is, and if it weren’t midnight and they both weren’t covered in burns and completely wiped from trudging through sewers (gross), she’d probably be considering jumping him right now.

Even as is, they settle down and she’s got her head back on his shoulder and one hand reaching up to card through his absurdly bristly hair. Esther’s chest feels warm and full even if they’re both battered to hell. There are empty ramen bowls right next to them and all the lights are off in the apartment except one because they were too tired to turn them on. If she’s gotta have to deal with fucking exploding manhole cover monsters in the sewers (because what the shit, New York, but also _of course_ , New York) this is the way she’d probably mind it the least. If she gets to survive it and then come home to this. 

Eventually Ricky’s eyes start drooping shut and Esther pokes him gently in his ( _massive, because freakishly strong heroic hunk boyfriend)_ bicep so he can get up and get that stuff from the medicine cabinet before both of them fall asleep on the floor. 

* * *

Esther boosts herself up on the counter which makes him have to look up at her, which is. New. Different. Good different. 

Ricky keeps his focus laser-concentrated on cutting out the gauze carefully, because these kitchen scissors are clean but they’re a little less sharp than they should be for this, and then on wrapping it loosely but not too loose around her arm, because it needs to keep the burn sterile, and then on taping it so it doesn’t move, because that’d be bad. 

And then he lets her stop being so patient and focused on getting patched up right and instead loop her arms around his neck so that he steps closer and puts his forehead against hers so they can just. Breathe in together. 

Esther is. Esther is radiant-light even in his giant sweatshirt and her comfy leggings in the midnight apartment, Esther is soft and cozy even when she’s sitting on the floor or the kitchen counter, Esther is so beautiful even when she’s holding a (fresh, Ricky switched it out when it started melting) ice pack to her side with one arm and getting the other one sprayed with antibiotics and wrapped up carefully in gauze. 

Esther is alive, and okay, and right now Ricky’s more tired than a full day at the fire station and then a really intense WOD with the Johns and then a swim to Staten Island and back and then a jog home. Not that he’s ever done all those things in that order, precisely. But he knows he’ll be back up tomorrow, and so will she, and he’s usually good to heal up more in the morning if he gets his full nine hours. So he can make sure his girlfriend is all the way okay, tomorrow. Ricky’s no Kingston, but he checked and neither of them have burns that are big enough to be dangerous. 

It doesn’t feel good, exactly, to be up at midnight and so tired he can feel it in his bone marrow. It doesn’t feel good, exactly, to be eating instant ramen on the floor in the mostly-dark apartment when he knows his mom makes _real_ ramen twenty times better. It doesn’t feel good, exactly, to be patching up his girlfriend afterwards because he ran out of heal in the middle of that fight and there was a moment there when Esther got hit by that giant iron manhole cover and he wasn’t close enough to _do anything_ that he wasn’t sure if he’d ever forgive himself for it. 

But tomorrow morning Ricky knows he can heal Esther all the way, and she’ll be really okay. And for now, well. This space between the two of them (not that much of it, now that he’s snugged close against Esther and they’re breathing each other’s air and she smells so _good_ fresh out of the shower) is a little bit good. 

And then Ricky yawns because he can’t help it. It makes Esther giggle in the soft way that Ricky’s proud of himself for causing even if it wasn’t 100% on purpose. 

“Take me to bed, sleepyhead,” Esther tells him. Which he’s pretty sure she doesn’t mean the way she usually means it? “Yes, to sleep, silly,” she adds, reading his mind before he even has to ask. And, well, Ricky is nothing if not committed to 1) his girlfriend and 2) him and his girlfriend both getting nine solid hours of sleep. So he lifts Esther right off the counter and sets her down gently on the kitchen floor so he can twine his fingers around hers and lead them both to their very well-deserved bed. 

* * *

Esther closes the bedroom door behind her and almost flops onto the bed, bone-tired and pulling the blankets around her. The ice helped, but now her whole side is cold, and Ricky is going to have to put up with her hogging the blankets for one night. (That’s a lie, he’ll just tug them back in a second and she’ll let them go.) 

Ricky looks like he’s already asleep, sprawled out half on her side of the bed. He’s just so _big_ and she’s not complaining because that means it’s already warm. Esther’s surprised when he turns over to face her and almost instinctively cuddles her close, wrapping his arms around her back ( _amazing furnace-warm stupidly perfect boyfriend_ ) _._ She smooshes her face into the crook of his neck and breathes in deep. She could swear that here, warm in bed with Ricky holding her, her side feels like it’s aching a little bit less. 

“Did you just use Lay on Hands? I thought you were out,” Esther mumbles into his shoulder.

“Um, I don’t think so?” Ricky withdraws his hands from where they were so he can look at them, frowning in the dark. “Just a hug, I think. Sorry.”

Esther hums something half into his shoulder and half into the pillow and gently paws around between them until she finds his hands and hangs on to them. “Of course you don’t even need magic to heal, of course your hugs are just that good,” she says, and puts his hands back where they were.

Her eyes are drooping again when Ricky whispers, “Love you Esther,” and squeezes her side a little in the hug. 

“Love you too,” she whispers back, and finds he’s smiling and already asleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tyler modding this prompt meme and also coming up with this particular prompt was extremely iconic behavior; I only hope I did it justice! I procrastinated writing this for a solid couple days because I was like _heck, what situation can I possibly concoct where a party that contains Kingston Brown and also the most paladin paladin to ever paladin Ricky Matsui would have to patch each other up?_
> 
> Title is from Will Jay and Terry Zhong's song "Night Cap"! 
> 
> I assure you that firey exploding manholes in Midtown are in fact a pretty regular thing (although not caused by sewer magma monsters), and FDNY and the utility companies do indeed feud about it. 
> 
> Kudos and comments feed my lil creator soul like Riz chowing down on Kalvaxus, and I reply to every comment!
> 
> This fic is rebloggable [ here ](https://acedetectivegukgak.tumblr.com/post/628083175656194048/nightcap-just-fall-in-the-bed-solasola) on my tumblr [ @acedetectivegukgak](https://acedetectivegukgak.tumblr.com/)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [nightcap (just fall in the bed) [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28577403) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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